Let Me Count the Ways
by Airgead
Summary: Billy loves Martha, and Martha loves Billy. Their relationship is one of the best things about Silk; a genuine friendship between two polar opposites who are perhaps more alike than they may care to admit, even to themselves. The story opens when Billy first learns that he is not well: what will happen when he finally tells Martha? BBC own what's theirs, the rest is my own work.
1. Chapter 1

**_A/N: I'm usually to be found over in the Spooks fandom where I'm writing a little thing called Hook, Line and Sinker, but having recently revisited all 3 series of Silk, an idea took hold and wouldn't leave me alone; so here is Chapter 1 of the result. I hope you will enjoy it; reviews, as always, are most welcome._**

**'How I feel about Miss Costello surpasseth all understanding.' – Billy Lamb**

It's all bluff, this job; ducking and diving and playing a blinder to secure my briefs the best cases, the biggest solicitors, the juiciest fees. My old dad had shown me the ropes when I was just a green kid straight from my O-levels in the local comprehensive, the one at the wrong end of Southend-on-Sea. True, I only just scraped through in Maths and Chemistry, but I did all right in P.E., English and History, and what else matters around the Inns of Court? Fast talking, fancy footwork and remembering who did what, and when, to whom, that's what a barrister's clerk needs, along with a pair of balls the size of a bull elephant's, and the hide to match. Man and boy, I've lived and breathed this job; and boy and man, I have loved that girl_. _Miss Costello. _Martha…_

Even the wedding band I've worn for more than twenty years isn't real; or, rather, it was once, but now it's just part of the uniform, as much as my three-piece suits or flashy ties (you can take the boy out of Essex, but taking Essex out of the boy, now that's something else entirely…). Most of the time I forget it's even there, until I wonder why some fit-looking bird in the corner of the pub has suddenly stopped giving me the eye; but lately, I've been only too glad of its presence, like a superhero's magic ring that gives me the power of invisibility. The last thing, the absolute last thing I need right now, is to have to explain to some woman that my downstairs is out of order, and not likely to be put right any time soon, even if my upstairs is gagging for it. It's just too humiliating; I'd rather die, first. As well I might.

The ring was my father's, given to me on what turned out to be his deathbed at age forty-nine, only none of us knew it at the time, except him; he always was a great one for thinking ahead, my dad. "You'll need this, lad. It'll keep the skirts away; you don't want to be doing with any of that in Chambers. Barristers are barristers, clerks are clerks, and never the twain, Billy, d'you hear me? Find a nice girl from the typing pool in another set, or a legal secretary, if you're really ambitious, and you'll be set for life." He died a few hours later, and I don't mind saying it was a relief and a mercy to see him out of the nameless, terrible pain that had gripped him so fiercely for a year, leaving him wrung out and grey as an old dishcloth, while the weight fell off him and his bones threatened to break through the fragile, papery skin that was all that held him together, in the end. I was twenty-six, a clerk in Alan Cowdry's old set over at Gray's Inn, and my father had taught me well in the ten years we had worked together.

All he had told me I held to be gospel truth, until Miss Martha Costello came banging into the clerks' room on her first day at Shoe Lane, and walked straight into my heart. She was everything my dad had warned me about: brilliant, beautiful, difficult, but with a burning passion for the law that lit her up from the inside out like a bonfire blazing on Guy Fawkes' Night, and complete conviction in that most glorious of English legal precepts, the presumption of innocence. She was a born defence barrister, a scrappy little blonde from Oop North, and from the minute she barged through the door I was courteously holding open for her, all spiky gelled hair and in a suit that looked as if she had just dragged it out of an Oxfam bin, wearing her black sixteen-holer Docs like a defiant statement of intent, I was, to all intents and purposes, a goner. In a world where money talks and bullshit walks, where appearance and polish is everything, where a man is known, and judged, by the cut of his suits and the reputation of his tailor, Miss Costello was like a bloody great cyclone, not just a breath of fresh air, arriving in Chambers. She was the most genuine article I had ever seen; the air around her seemed to warp and bend as she strode in, fire in her eyes and a string of Mancunian imprecations falling from her lips as she clomped out after realising her mistake.

I had hurried after her, straightening my tie in an uncharacteristically nervous way. 'Miss? Miss, Head of Chambers' rooms are this way,' I had begun, seeing her barrelling down the hallway towards the WC, and she had rounded on me. 'Why're you calling me Miss? You're not much older than me!' I had blinked in surprise. 'It's what I would call any lady barrister, same as the gents are all Sir. Tradition, Miss. There's a lot of it in the Law.' She had nodded, once, and while I was stood there trying to decide if her eyes were more of a sapphire or a cobalt blue, a look of barely contained impatience that I was to come to know very well crossed her face. 'Oh, sorry, Miss. This way, Miss.' I had led her upstairs, and into the presence of our then, as now, Head of Chambers. Mr Alan Cowdry, as true and fine a gentleman lawyer as you'd find if you went looking throughout the entire length and breadth of this sceptred isle. I've been with him since the start of Shoe Lane, and I'll be with him to the end, which is beginning to loom ever closer on the horizon, or so it would seem…but I digress.

Afterwards, she had clattered down the steep staircase in those dreadful boots, poked her head around the door of the clerks' room, and said, 'Want a fag?' I did, as it so happened; as the Head didn't care for smoking in Chambers, I had shown her the place that all the clerks went when in need of a gasper, a sheltered corner under the eaves of the building across the courtyard from Shoe Lane. Dragging on my Silk Cut, I had narrowed my eyes and given her the old once-over, when I thought she wasn't looking: I was wrong. 'Red,' she said, leaning on the railing and exhaling smoke through her nostrils; I had glanced questioningly at her, and she had said again, 'Red. My knickers. They're red, in case you were wondering.' I had just inhaled a lungful of smoke, and like a schoolboy sneaking his first smoke behind the bike shed, I had almost choked at these words, coupled with the most direct gaze I'd ever seen from a woman. 'Not that you're going to get a chance to find out for yourself, of course; it's just that you seemed so intent on ogling my arse, I thought I'd put an end to your speculations, and just tell you.' Her eyes had fairly bored holes through me, and I remember thinking, _Blimey, just wait till you cross-examine a hostile witness…a Rottweiler would be tame by comparison. _

Coughing and spluttering, and with my face turning a fine shade of scarlet, I had attempted to apologise; but the words wouldn't come, and as first one, then the other, corner of her mouth had twitched upwards into a smile, I had forgotten everything: my apology, my old dad and his gospel truth, all the unwritten rules of clerking, and instead had stuck out my right hand, given her my most charming grin, and said, 'I don't believe we've been properly introduced, Miss. I'm Billy Lamb, and I'll be clerking you.' She had finished her cigarette while considering my outstretched hand, before seizing it in a surprisingly strong, cool grip, and shaking it firmly as she had replied, eyes sparkling with amusement at my boldness, 'Martha Costello, junior barrister, just landed in London and in need of a friend. Will you be my friend, Billy Lamb?' I had beamed back at her. 'Miss Costello, I'm your man.' And from that day to this, I've never spoken a truer word. Clerk, confidante, friend and occasional adversary, I'm her man through and through, in every way but the one that I know will never be, can never be, now. I have known Miss Martha Costello, Queen's Counsel, for nigh on nineteen years, and I have loved her as I have never loved anyone, for each and every one of them.

What I feel for her goes far beyond the power of mere words to explain; it's not that I fancy her (although I do, quite a lot), or that I consider her to be the best defence barrister, QC or not, in London (and she is, hands down), or even that she's utterly staunch in her loyalties, to her clients, her Chambers, and her senior clerk. It's something much purer and far finer than all that. Without being too soppy about it, I'd go so far as to say that I think I'm in love with her soul, that warrior spirit of hers and her unique ability to believe absolutely in whatever case or cause she's fighting for. Martha Costello has integrity in a profession that gets its daily bread by saying one thing and doing another; and street-fighter that I am, deviser of Machiavellian schemes to do right by my barristers and my Chambers though I may be, I will honour and admire and respect and love that girl until I take my last breath. Which may be sooner than I think; certainly it will be far, far sooner than I would like. _Such is life,_ as the famed Australian bushranger, Ned Kelly, was heard to say, just before they hanged him for his crimes.

That's the thing with the situation I now find myself in; in the midst of life, I am dying. Even as I type the words, I can't believe it myself, so why would anyone else? That's why I haven't told anyone except Martha; that, and I couldn't bear the awkward sympathy, the pitying looks, the whispered conversations behind my back. Most of all, I don't want them to know that I'm…less…than I used to be. What a joke, what a cosmic bloody coincidence: me, Billy Lamb, the baddest barrister's clerk in the country, with balls of brass and the dick to match, has about as much get up and go nowadays, as far as manly urges go, as my dear old aunt Ethel, God rest her. Me, whose vitality and energy are the stuff of legend, wilting before the onslaught of yet another hot flush, me, the toughest of the tough, feeling forever on the verge of tears, my eyes hot and prickly, my throat tight, as emotional as a bride left at the altar.

In short, I don't know how women do it, manage, I mean, with all these hormones generating a hundred different feelings every moment of every day. It's a wonder that any of them can see straight, let alone stand up in Court and decimate the prosecution's case with stone cold logic, point by point. I'm not having a go at the fairer sex, either: I think they all deserve bloody medals, now I know a bit about how things are for them. For the first time in my life, foreplay makes sense…or it would, if I were getting any. Which brings me to the crux of the matter: me, and Miss Costello, and heaven help us all.


	2. Chapter 2

_**A/N: Thanks to everyone who read and/or reviewed the first chapter, your interest and encouragement is much appreciated! **_

When I first found out that I was unlikely to make old bones, when the doctors and oncologists and urologists and radiologists and every other -ologist the NHS could trot out to torment me were poking and prodding and prying and doing unspeakable things to my unmentionables, one thought above all kept me awake at nights, staring into the dark: _Billy Lamb, you're a bloody idiot. _All those years I'd poured my heart and soul into making or breaking barristers, all those years I'd devoted to building the best defence set in London, and what did I have to show for it? A bachelor flat in Holborn, a healthy balance at the bank, and nineteen years' worth of carefully-hidden feelings for Miss Martha Costello, that's what. Oh, we're friends, no doubt about it, and good ones too. She knows that I'll always have her back, and I know that she'll fight my corner like a lioness whenever the need arises, but it goes so much deeper than that. The success of Shoe Lane is testament to how I feel about her; all that unspent energy and passion had to go_ somewhere_, so I threw myself into my work, becoming indispensable, learning everything about everyone, building my network, poaching briefs and wrangling returns, weaving myself into the very fabric of the place until I could barely tell where Shoe Lane life left off and my own life began, and then one day it simply stopped mattering. I_ was_ Shoe Lane, and Shoe Lane was me.

Which isn't to say that I've lived like a monk: I've had my fair share, and perhaps more than, of solicitors and secretaries, judges' associates and officers of the Court. But none of them could ever hold a candle to Miss Costello; she's the sun in my sky, the reason that I get up in the morning. Next to her, all the rest sort of fade away, and the more I got to know her over the years, and the closer we became, the less interested I was in a quick roll in the hay with just any bit of skirt. Not that I'd ever cop to it out loud: I do have a certain reputation to maintain, after all. A sly comment here, a cheeky insinuation there, a teasing touch on a stockinged knee or a salacious look when I thought I could get away with it, and half the female population of the Inner Temple were soon convinced that I was always on the pull. _Billy the Kid_, they had called me in my younger days, and not in reference to my youthful looks, but because they thought I was as horny as a goat; and if I'm being honest, having them thinking that worked brilliantly. My reputation preceded me, and I'm sure I was the talk of many a typing pool; and when my primal urges did get the better of me, no-one was ever surprised to see me leaving the Old Cock tavern, the aptly named Temple local, with yet another tipsy solicitor or giggling junior clerk from the set across the way. But when I think now of all the time I've wasted with other women, when the one I really wanted was right under my nose the entire time…it's a crying shame, that's what it is, and I don't mind admitting that I have, and more than once, and I can't blame it all on the hormone therapy. Not all of it.

Old Will, the Bard himself, couldn't have come up with a more convoluted lot of ironic coincidences and star-crossed lovers if he'd been alive and well and writing for the New Globe, just across the river. First, take me, practically castrated by the cancer treatment but still hanging onto the dream of a life that I've never had, and never will have; let's call it the last wish of a dying man. There's Miss Costello, who could have any man she wanted, but who would rather go home with a juicy new brief, nine times out of ten. I thought _I_ worked hard, until I saw how she loses herself in her cases the way that a man loses himself in the woman he loves. She's a workhorse at heart, that girl, and even since taking silk she hasn't eased up; her caseload is relentless, her social life non-existent. Her whole world is comprised of Chambers, Court, the cells where she sees her clients, and drinks with colleagues at the Old Cock. She's not had a day off sick since her bit of bother last year, and she hasn't taken a proper holiday this century. She's too pale, too tired, too much alone, but I know her to her bones, and she wouldn't have it any other way. Besides, with her passion for defence, she should have "_Innocent until proven guilty_" tattooed somewhere on that milky, fine skin of hers. Perhaps she does. Not that I'll ever find out; chance would be a fine thing, as my old dad would say.

And then there's Mr Reader. Clive St John Roderick Reader, to trot out the whole disaster. He's our toff, and if he wasn't so charmingly disarming, he'd be a real snake. He's from money, real, old, proper money, the sort that gets passed down in land and property and fat trust accounts held at Coutts & Co. He was born with the proverbial silver spoon clenched firmly between his little pink gums, and enjoyed all the usual perks on his way up in life: he got off to a flying start at Harrow, then at Brasenose College, Oxford, where he took a first in Law and rowed in the University eight. He could have had his pick of sets after he passed his Bar examinations, but Mr Cowdry and I got to him first. He has his pick of women too, and he does, believe me. They swoon at the sight of him in wig and gown, on his way to fight the good fight; and make no mistake, being six-foot-three with floppy blonde hair, big blue eyes and a cut-glass accent does him no harm in, or out, of court.

Fortunately, he also has Miss Costello to keep him honest and on the side of the angels. She knocks the gilt corners off him when he needs it, but she's always there for him, in ways that only fellow soldiers who have been into battle together can understand. Theirs is a bond forged in the trenches, all right. They started at Shoe Lane within a few days of each other – Mr Reader used to tease her that he had a week's seniority, until she took silk – and between them, they've done it all. Rape, murder, fraud, every kind of theft, even the odd spot of personal injury; they've represented the lot, and won more often than they lost, which is nice for them and very gratifying for their senior clerk, as it makes my job a hell of a lot easier. Everyone loves a winner, as the old saying goes; even more so if you're as guilty as sin and not fancying the thought of a stretch at Her Majesty's pleasure, and above all things, Miss Costello loves to win.

When it comes to pleasure, Mr Reader doesn't stint himself, I have to say. I've seen him take home a different woman from the pub for nights on end; he's fond of weekends away, in Prague, or Paris, or Rome. If that doesn't suit, then he can always nip up the M40 to the family pile in Northants, or pop down to the family seaside villa on the Isle of Wight. He loves good food, better drink, and top-shelf totty, and all of these things seem to just fall into his lap without his lifting so much as one well-manicured finger. With such an embarrassment of riches, you'd think he'd be content with his lot in life; but there's one thing that's always just out of reach, one prize that he can't quite attain, and that is to convince Miss Costello to consider him seriously in a romantic light.

She's too smart by half, for a start, and as he parades his privileged existence, his glittering connections, and his myriad conquests through Chambers like a character out of a Restoration comedy, she just watches, and smiles, and keeps him at arm's length. Oh, don't get me wrong: she'll drink with him at the conclusion of a case, or grab a bite to eat, when they're both working back late. They're colleagues, occasional combatants, and comrades, but he's nowhere near good enough for her, in my book. Too much slick, superficial style, and not enough substance. But then again, no-one's good enough for Miss Costello, in my book, even if she's as far out of my reach as the moon, and just as beautiful, inside as well as out. There's something… _unworldly_, that's the word, about her, when she's wrapped up in a case. Like one of those medieval saints done in stained glass; she has the same pure, preoccupied, selfless look, and it's only when she lets rip with a naughty word or three in frustration, or gets up to ease the kinks out of her back, groaning as her muscles protest, that I remember she's still just a barrister, same as the rest of them, and no different than anyone else in Shoe Lane.

Except to me, she is. Always has been, always will be. I can't explain it, and heaven knows I've spent enough time trying to, over the years. All I know is that there are some nine million souls in the Greater London area, and then there's hers, the only one in the whole nine million that I care for beyond my own, or what's left of it. A barrister's clerk soon learns that his soul is a commodity to be bought, sold, or bartered away, the same as silver or gold: it's the price we pay to secure the success of our set and to further the careers of those we work for. There are barristers to whom I'd begrudge the very smallest snippet of my soul; but for Miss Costello, I pour it out freely, even when she doesn't always see it. Isn't that what love is, always wanting the best for your beloved, and to hell with the cost to yourself?

I remember Miss Costello looking at the photos on my desk, not long after she joined Shoe Lane; they're all bluff, the same as my wedding band, but for some reason, I wanted her to know the truth. She had peered at one in particular of me with a kiddy on one knee and my arm around another, and I had only just caught the subtle shift in her expression. 'Those're my brother's kids, taken this Christmas just gone. Jake, he's five, and Jasmine is beside us. They're good kids.' That piercing gaze had travelled from the framed picture to my left hand, and up to meet my eyes, and the words had tumbled out like dominoes falling, as I raced to explain. 'It's not what you think, it's just that the Law is a very conservative profession, and I'm young to be a senior clerk…so I wear this – nodding towards the ring – 'and put some happy snaps about the place, and there you have it, Billy Lamb, respectable family man. It's just a bit of window dressing, Miss.'

She had stared at me for a long moment, before shrugging, 'I suppose it's no different than wearing a second-hand wig as a junior; you're passing off someone else's experience as your own. Don't worry, Billy, your secret's safe with me.' And so it was, and a thousand more like it over the years; Martha Costello is as safe as the Bank of England, when it comes to keeping a confidence. Clerks are clerks, and barristers are barristers, and never the twain, all right, but a man's got to have something to hang onto, a scrap of hope to clutch to his heart, when he wakes alone with the sweat pouring off him and his stomach rebelling against the handful of painkillers he washed down with neat Scotch before stumbling, exhausted, to bed. I don't know if there's a God and most of the time, I don't much care, but if I believe in anything, I believe in that girl. She's the closest friend I have, closer than even my own family, the only person in this world that I trust completely. So why, then, am I so bleeding terrified to tell her I'm dying?

Yes, I know. _Billy Lamb, you're a bloody idiot._


	3. Chapter 3

It's funny how fast a bloke can go from being fit as a bull, to feeling a bit wrong in the waterworks department, to being told by some po-faced doctor that he's probably not long for this world, and if there's anything he really wants to do – travel the world, go skydiving, write his memoirs – he'd best do it sooner rather than later. And as for kids, well, too bad, so sad. If he hasn't had them by now, he's got a very short timeframe to get some Doris knocked up, and then it's goodbye to all that. I never really appreciated what testosterone did for me until I had none. It's not just the loss of my manhood and along with it the dirty dreams that I'd wake from hard and aching most mornings, or the automatic nod-and-wink reaction to anything in a skirt. I've realised it's where that killer instinct to compete, to push and to shove, wheel and deal to keep my job, my barristers, and my Chambers intact comes from; without it, I'm having to work very hard to keep up appearances. I just don't have the same get up and go anymore, the ability to run on adrenaline for twelve hours a day and still go out drinking and shag myself silly with some bird or other. By six p.m. I'm done in, wanting only to go home, crawl into bed and cry myself to sleep; that's the hormone therapy at work, or so I keep telling myself.

Sometimes I think I'd be better off taking a handful of pills, downing a decent bottle of Scotch, and choosing my own end, rather than waiting for what I've been told is coming. When I think about it, which is more often than I'd like, I'm actually glad that it's just me to worry about; no wife or kids to feel guilty over, not even a dog or a cat. There have been nights when I've sat at home, bottle in one hand, packet of strong painkillers in the other, staring at the wall and seriously contemplating it. But then I think of who would come looking for me when I didn't turn up at work or answer my phone, who would batter the door down in fear and fury when I didn't answer it, who would be the first to see my body slumped on the floor, and I can't do it. Not to her. Martha's had grief enough of her own to deal with, and besides, she would never, ever, forgive me.

I can't bear that thought, and so I keep on keeping on, day in day out, while every day finding it that little bit harder to bluff them into thinking I'm the Billy they all know and love, or loathe, as the case may be; it's all much the same to me, in the end. No one likes to feel that they pass unnoticed through the world, or that they leave no impression, good or bad, on the people they spend most of their time with, do they? You want them to know you've been there, that you've made a difference that only you could have wangled or fought for or wheedled out of some solicitor with an iffy liver the size of Surrey and a temper to match. Or at least I do; call it professional vanity, but I want to be known for what I do, and then I want to be known for what I did, once I'm pushing up daisies. _Here lies_ _Billy Lamb, a king amongst barristers'clerks, _that's what my headstone should read, if there's any justice in this world. And yeah, I already know the answer to that one: there's precious little, if any, and most of it dispensed not by blind Justice with her sword and scales, but by one Martha Costello, with fire in her belly and a tongue as smart as a whip. She's something else, that girl, and the way she takes on the lumbering old dinosaur that is the British legal system is nothing short of miraculous to behold: I'd even go so far as to say she's the closest thing I've got to a hero.

Last year, though, she was the one in need of a white knight. When she told me that she was pregnant, it had been like a kick in the guts; but she was watching me with eyes that dared me to react with anything other than supreme indifference, and so I'd toned it down quick smart. I was dying to know who the father was, but I know her well enough to realise that to ask would have been the stupidest thing I'd ever done, and so I'd smiled until it hurt, and played the dependable, discreet professional. Over the next few weeks I'd watched her begin to bloom – it's funny how it suits some women, and leaves others looking worse than death – and smile that secret smile to herself while her hands drifted unconsciously across her belly while she worked at her desk, or ordered an orange juice in the pub, instead of her usual bottle of red. It made me happy to see her in those moments, all soft and unguarded for once, and I wondered if that was what she'd be like with a lover, if this was the _real_ Martha Costello.

And then I'd found out who the lucky man was, and it had taken every scrap of self-control I had not to strangle him with his Old Harrovian tie. Of all the barristers in all the Chambers in all of London, it had to be him. Of course it did. On the one hand, the revelation had gone a long way to explaining the strained atmosphere in Shoe Lane at the time, but on the other, it had been a massive shock. Miss Costello and Mr Reader, making the beast with two backs…it just didn't bear thinking about, which was why I couldn't seem to stop. So I'd forced myself to focus on the real reason I was sat across from him in a pub neither of us ever went to: he was thinking of sneaking out of Shoe Lane, and I'd caught him with his hand on the doorknob, so to speak, or some sort of knob, at any rate. It had been easy then to channel the outrage and anger, and almost before I knew what I was doing, I had taken hold of that poncy tie and pulled him towards me, while fear flared in his eyes as he began to understand just what he had done: wrecked his career, and my trust in him, in one fell swoop. I was so angry with him, I lost it completely, and I don't mind admitting that when I grabbed his dicky knee and dug my fingers into it hard, I was thinking of Miss Costello and what was she going to do with a kid, and how the hell was I meant to sell a preggers barrister when half the solicitors in this country still turn up their noses at the idea of a lady lawyer in the first place.

Oh, I was in a rare temper, all right, and not even the sight of Mr Reader's face turning chalk-white with pain could shake me out of it. It was the betrayal that hurt the most, even worse than the realisation that he'd been having it off with my darling girl. Chambers, whether we like it or not, is a family. We spend more time with each other than we do with our own nearest and dearest, and in my case there weren't too many of them left, as it happens. Mum had passed away about a year after Dad, and with both of them gone, the rest of the family had just drifted apart. My younger sister, Caroline, had married and moved to London, but I was so caught up in clerking that I only saw her and his family a few times a year, and I lost touch with the few remaining elderly aunts and uncles, who one by one died off or went into a home. My loyalty is to Shoe Lane and my barristers, first, last and forever, and I expect nothing less from them in return. I watch over their careers, steer them right, give them the briefs they deserve, act as their confessor, their professional conscience and their guardian angel all in one, and I get precious little thanks in return.

Not that I expect it; watching each hatch of baby barristers stretch their wings, jump out of the nest and make their first faltering flights on their way to becoming fully-fledged legal eagles is reward enough for me. That, and the increasingly fat clerks' fees which they start to bring in if they're halfway competent. I go to each one of their first appearances in Court proper, although they never see me hidden at the back of the public gallery: I like to see what I'm selling, after all, and what sort of work they might be best suited to. There've been a few that I've moved on out of Chambers altogether; Miss Niamh Cranitch was one such. A Judge's daughter was never going to be anything else other than a prosecutor, in the end, and so I found a place for her in a good set over in the Middle Temple. She was glad enough to go; I think she wanted a fresh start, which in her case meant as far away from our blue-eyed boy as possible. Always a mistake, that, sleeping with your pupil-master, when the criminal bar's worse than a posh girls' school for malicious rumours and vicious gossip, and Uncle Billy hears it all. It's not good for the pupil-master, either, especially not if he's got an application in for silk…

Once I'd gotten my head around the idea that in a few months' time Chambers would be even more like a crèche than usual, I'd decided that it was up to me to keep Miss Costello quietly just ticking over, instead of racing at full speed. As senior clerk, I controlled her workload, and with the help of young Jake, my nephew and heir-apparent if he shows himself any good at this lark, I thought I could manage it without her twigging. I thought wrong, and she tore strips off me, furious that I was implying she needed a rest, as Jakey-boy had put it. That's the thing about her; she gives no quarter, but she asks for none, either. She's as hard on herself as she is on opposing counsel, and I love her for it. I love her for many things, but that ferocious pride that drives her to work longer hours, take on more cases and win more victories than anyone else in Chambers, that warrior spirit of hers, is right at the top of the list. I could have done with some of it myself, when it came to that psychopathic little toerag, Gary Rush; if I'd been a bit more like her, and a bit less like a senior clerk, she would never have lost the baby.

I blame myself for that, even though it was his doing. I should have seen what he was. That's the thing with being a defence set; we get it all in here. The good, the bad, the sad, and the barking mad, but I still should have seen it, the evil in him. She knew, all right, but typical of her, she'd said nothing, wanting to manage it on her own. She hates asking for help because she doesn't want to be seen as different from anyone else – read, any other bloke – in Chambers. And while it was impossible to know that Rush was going to go ballistic, hunt her down in the hallowed halls of the Central Criminal Court itself, and knee her so hard in the stomach that it brought on a miscarriage, it's my job to look out for her, and that day, I failed miserably. When flowers were sent from Chambers (thirty-six red roses, one from each of us and a half-dozen from me) I paid for them myself, and when I saw her creeping unsteadily back into Court the next day, white as a sheet and with a haunted, lost look in her eyes, I'd have cut off my own balls for her if I'd thought it would have helped. Now, I wish I had: it might have stopped the cancer that's threatening to spread throughout my body, despite the radiotherapy, the chemotherapy and enough oestrogen to turn me into the next Mrs Slocombe, only without the blue rinse.

See, I'm not stupid enough to think that I'm going to be the exception to the rule, that I'm going to be the one who beats prostate cancer diagnosed at stage three, that I'm going to win through. The best I can hope for is to go down fighting, and so I've made up my mind to stay schtum and keep on working; at any rate, Shoe Lane would die without me, and I'd die without Shoe Lane. It's getting harder, though, to keep turning up bang on seven-thirty each morning. The medication I'm on makes me so tired, and I don't feel like eating; everything tastes tinny, somehow, and then there are the hot flushes which overcome me without warning and leave me shagged out, only without the shag. I've never been one to sit down all day, in this job, but I'm having to spend more and more time in the clerks' room and not out and about romancing solicitors over long boozy lunches.

As for alcohol, well, I still indulge, but I have to be careful that I don't overdo the pain meds at the same time, or else I could end up having my stomach pumped out at Barts, and that's something I'm keen to avoid, for obvious reasons. I think, though, it's the loneliness that's worst to bear, the not having someone who knows what I'm going through when I'm laid out like a fresh mackerel on a slab in the MRI scanner, or a hand to hold when they're sticking me full of poisonous substances in the hope that it'll cure, rather than kill me. The closest thing I've got to anything like that is an iPod that I asked her to fill full of her favourite songs; it's like hearing her voice right there in that stark white radiation suite. My head aches all the time, now, and I feel as if I'm trying to see my way clear through a grey mist that never lifts; even the simplest bit of wheeling or dealing has begun to feel like a mammoth effort, only there's no-one else up to it. Jake's a long way from being ready, and I don't trust John, ever since the attempt to get rid of me last year.

What scares me the most, though, is that I'll start to lose the plot and not know it until Chambers comes crashing down around my ears. That's why I have to let someone know, and the only someone I want to know is Miss Costello. She's the only one I trust enough to drop my guard with, the only one strong enough not to go to pieces at the news. Over the last few weeks I've gone to her room again and again, wanting to tell her, but each time I've bottled it, or Mr Reader or some other member of Chambers has been there, or else she's looked so tired and weighed down with work that I haven't had the heart to add to her burden, until now. The numbers from my latest test show that the hormone therapy that's been keeping the cancer at bay is starting to fail, and things are only going to go downhill from here on out; I need to tell her soon. She doesn't always like it when I'm brutally honest with her, and I'd be the first to say that we've butted heads more than once over the years, but she always recognises the truth, in the end. Only thing is, how can I ever look Martha Costello straight in the eye, and say those three little words?

**A/N: For those not familiar with the 1970s BBC sitcom **_**Are You Being Served,**_** Mrs Slocombe is a woman of a certain age, notable for her brightly coloured hairdo. She's the antithesis of the type of woman Billy would be attracted to.**


	4. Chapter 4

The worst of it is, Martha knows that something's up: I keep catching her looking at me like she's trying to figure out why I've come over all misty-eyed again, but she's too sharp and too smart to keep swallowing my line about having a wander down memory lane about this or that great sporting moment in history. She's begun asking me if I'm all right, too, and I'm buggered if I know what to say in response to that, so I avoid the question. The hormone implants are still doing the trick, or so the doc tells me; the other day I actually popped a button on one of my narrower-fitting shirts, and I've been feeling all hot and itchy in the chest. Not to mention the mood swings and the unexpected tears... it's a miracle that there aren't more murders committed by women, if you ask me. I don't know how they do it, truly I don't. From being a steady-as-it-goes sort of bloke, I've turned into one who doesn't know if he's coming or going, half the time, and I hate it, hate that it makes me feel like I don't know who I am any more.

I've just about accepted that I'm living on borrowed time, that when the implants finally stop working altogether, it'll be all over, but I'm so tired of carrying this secret around on my own like a bloody great millstone around my neck. I so want to tell her, but I just can't seem to get the words out; they keep getting stuck in my throat, or dodged with all the skill of a born ducker and diver. I almost told her over a beer in our local a few months back, but I bottled it at the last second, acting instead like I was all choked up over David Cowdrey, which, make no mistake, I was. He's the Head of Chambers' kid, and my own godson, and he was in all kinds of strife at the time. She hadn't been convinced though. _Billy Lamb,_ I'd berated myself,_ you are a horribly bad liar_ _when it comes to that girl. She sees right through you, you know…_ I hadn't slept much that night. Realising how much I had wanted to tell her had frightened me badly, and besides, I don't sleep so well any more. I've got aches and pains in odd places, and a headful of worry to keep me awake, with the question of what's going to happen to Chambers when I'm gone top of the list.

My old dad used to say, _all good things come to those who wait_, and sure enough, when the right moment finally does arrive, it's like a gift. It's also the hardest thing I've ever done, harder than going into work the afternoon my dad died, all alone and more lost than I'd ever been, and much harder than running in the London Marathon a couple of years back (looking at me now, no-one'd ever believe it). I suppose I really owe the moment to Mr Cowdrey, whose departure as Head of Chambers has made me realise what Shoe Lane is likely to become, if our shiny new practice manager has anything to say about it, and that's not the legacy I want. Martha is the only candidate for the headship who'll make sure that we remain true to our defending-is-in-the-blood DNA, in the long run; and so I send her a message once I know she's out of court for the day, with a win under her belt over a possible murder, which had turned out to be a rather unusual case of assisted suicide. Kids these days…

Hoping she'll be in a listening frame of mind, I spend the next ten minutes nervously making little practice speeches, but the words in the pamphlets the doc's given me don't sound right when I say them out loud. I quickly sink half a tumbler of Alan Cowdrey's best Scotch, turn round, and suddenly she's stood there in the doorway, and it's just the two of us in the clerks' room, alone at last. 'I got your message,' she says, smiling, and my heart does a great big flip at the sight of her, all sleek and blonde and beautiful. 'You won, miss!' I congratulate her, adding, 'Everyone should have control over the manner of their departure,' in a rather more sincere tone than I intended; she picks up on it, watching me steadily with that patented truth-seeking gaze of hers, waiting me out. Trying to lighten things up, I spot young Jake's resignation letter on the table and make a funny about it, something about how in one move he's raised the IQ of both sets. Martha knows that for me, this is nothing short of a betrayal; my own nephew, abandoning the nest. 'Ah, kids grow up, Billy. You've got to let them get on with their own lives.' Knocking back the rest of the whisky for courage, I tell her that I want her to be the next Head of Chambers, but she's having none of it. 'I do, miss, because I won't be here,' I insist, and a tiny crease of puzzlement appears between her brows: the thought of Shoe Lane without Billy Lamb is evidently one that has never crossed her mind, until now.

Before I lose my nerve, and the tears welling up in my eyes overwhelm me completely, I tell her, sounding just as calm and unflinching as I could hope for, 'Because I'm dying.' The look in her eyes nearly kills me on the spot: all huge and shocked and full of sympathy and enough kindness to choke a horse. It's so her: crystal clear, unguarded and utterly genuine. It's like I can see straight into her soul, and it's the most beautiful thing in the world, and when I move towards her, drawn like iron to a magnet, she wraps her arms strongly around me, and we hold onto each other for what feels like forever. I cry a bit, then, and I think she does too, and then she whispers, 'Let's get out of here. Take me home, Billy,' and I pull back to look at her, confused, so she adds, 'Let's go back to yours,' and for the first time in all the years I've been clerking, I don't have a clue as to what's going on. She takes my hand, leads me out the door and down to the main road, hails a cab and gives the address – I didn't realise she even knew it – before climbing in next to me, all without ever letting go of my hand. We keep holding hands all the way to Holborn, but not a word is said: none are needed. The determined look in her eye, the one I love to see when I pass her a juicy brief, tells me everything I need to know, and for once, I'm content to wait and see where she's going with all this.

When I've let us into my little flat, Martha takes a quick look round, and her eyes return to mine, surprised. 'Why, it's neat as a pin!' she exclaims, and I blink, more than a little disoriented at seeing my home with her in it for the first time. 'It's just that the clerks' room…' she tails off, and her eyes travel over me, from my neatly knotted tie and perfectly pressed shirt, to my shoes, polished to within an inch of their lives. 'I'm sorry, Billy, I didn't mean to…' and unbelievably, Martha Costello actually blushes, bright colour flooding her pale cheeks. I chuckle unsteadily, 'Yeah, the clerks' room is a mess, but that's not to say _I _am. Before he went in for clerking, my dad did a stint in the RAF, and his tidy ways rubbed off on me. Truth be told, I can only stand the chaos at work because I know I can come home to find everything exactly as I left it and nothing out of place.' Martha nods approvingly, and I take a deep breath and clap my hands together nervously.

'Where's my manners gone to, here you are and I haven't offered you so much as a drink,' I begin, heading towards the kitchen, while she slips out of her court shoes with an audible sigh of relief, and soft-footed as a cat, pads towards the sitting room. 'I've got lager, or there's a nice pale ale, or Scotch, if you'd rather?' I call out, and when her voice answers from just behind me I nearly jump right out of my skin. 'Mine's a lager, thanks, and haven't you got _any_ food in there at all?' she says, amused. Sheepishly, I hand her a bottle and close the door before she spots the vial of liquid morphine in the butter conditioner. 'There's not much point, when I'm out nearly every night and back in Chambers before breakfast.' She frowns, and then nods in acknowledgement of the reality of my life, and I thank God and all the little angels that Martha Costello is the most pragmatic woman I have ever had the fortune of knowing. Anyone else would have lectured me about eating only organic food and taking huge doses of cancer-killing vitamins and meditating my stress away, but she just accepts me as I am, and that's worth everything. 'Cheers,' we toast each other, clinking our bottles together. Martha downs half hers in one long swallow, standing right there in my postage-stamp-sized kitchen in her stockinged feet, while I keep pace and wonder for the thousandth time what she has in mind.

I don't have to wait very long; she finishes her beer, looks me square in the eye, and says, 'Did you mean it, that time when I got silk and you said that you loved me?' _Oh, no. Not now, please not now… _Just then, a bit of beer goes down the wrong way and I double over, coughing and spluttering and trying to ignore the sudden stabbing pain that starts up in my right side, and Martha pounds lightly on my back in an attempt to be helpful, which is in fact agonising. Gasping, I wave her off and take a few deep breaths, hands on knees, bent over like a little, old man. When I look at her again, she seems unaccountably nervous, clasping her hands in front of her protectively, and so I do the only thing a dying man can: I tell her the truth, more or less.

''Course I did, what sort of question's that?' I ask, trying to keep things light. 'C'mon miss, you know how I feel about you, the best barrister I've ever clerked.' I try her with one of my trademark charming smiles, but it feels forced; this isn't what she wants to hear, but it'll have to do, because I'm all at sea here, myself. 'We've known each other for a very long time, Billy. Please, don't give me the Essex wide-boy act now.' I lean against the fridge and shrug like I don't have a clue what she means, but those eyes of hers are twin spotlights, seeking out the truth, and there's an almost fragile look about her that I can't quite place at first, until I realise that it's vulnerability: the great Martha Costello QC, ferocious in court and out, has dropped all her defences, and behind that high-intensity gaze of hers is fear at the risk she's taking in pursuing this line of questioning. The next second, she's turning away from me, setting the empty bottle on the bench-top, walking towards the door, and I know that if I let her go now, things will never be the same between us, and the thought of that terrifies me: I need her now, more than I need anyone or anything in the world. _I should have remembered that she can see right through me…_ With my heart in my mouth, I follow her into the hallway. 'Miss, wait.' She's almost out the door, but turns at the sound of my voice, one eyebrow lifted impatiently, as if dealing with an especially slow prosecution witness in court. _It's now or never,_ I tell myself: _say it, or she's gone._ Taking a deep breath, I plunge in.

'Thing is, Miss, that I _am_ an Essex wide-boy, and I'm also your clerk, and yes, I've got prostate cancer, and yes, they've got me pumped more full of girly hormones than cheap chicken nuggets, and yes, I love you, Martha Costello. I've loved you ever since you came banging into Chambers in those bloody awful Docs and that Oxfam reject suit, and I'll love you until the day I die, if you'll pardon the expression. I've loved you through thick and thin, up and down, winning and losing. I've loved you so long I can't remember _not _loving you… we're alike, you and me. Both from the wrong side of the tracks, both making our own way in a world where we've gotta be twice as good as the spoonys like Mr Reader to even get noticed. We're street fighters and scrappers at heart, but we've always had each other's back, because we know what it's like to come from nothing and struggle for everything. It's what makes you the lawyer you are, and it's what makes me the man I am. We're the same, don't you see?' I have to stop then to get my breath, and my heart's going like the clappers; she's staring at me as if I've gone mad, and maybe I have, when with one swift movement she shuts the front door, strides towards me, takes hold of my hand and leads me up the hallway, apparently in search of the bedroom. _Oh, the cruel irony of it all…_

Once we're there, she says softly, 'I want to be clear that this isn't about sex; I think we're a bit beyond that, you and me. We know each other too well. It's not about sympathy, either, in case you were wondering.' While I'm trying to get my head round that, she continues, kicking off her shoes, 'Do you know what I hate most about living alone? It's the lack of physical contact. You get used to it, the not touching or being touched, but you never stop craving it.' I know exactly what she means, but I'm still not sure where she's going with all this, even as she unknots my tie and her fingers seek out the buttons on my shirt one by one. For a moment I wonder if all this is some sort of hallucination, like the doc warned me could happen if I had too many painkillers, but it feels so real, and I can smell her crisp perfume, and the thing I have dreamed of for so long is actually happening: _she's really here, with me. _

We're the same height, now she's out of her shoes, and our eyes meet, her pupils huge in the dimly lit room. 'This is just about being here, together. Two people, taking comfort from each other, because we may never pass this way again.' I think I understand, but to make sure, I ask in a voice hoarse with unshed tears, 'Gather your rosebuds, d'you mean?' She gives a little shudder, probably remembering the end of that particular poem, before smiling, 'That's the spirit. Old Time is still a-flying, right?' as she slides her hands inside my open shirt and it falls to the floor. In return, I undo her blouse, but while there's no doubt her breasts are beautiful, to my eternal shame, I have not the slightest interest in them, or in removing her bra. She seems to understand, and buttons it up again with a wry look. Once she has stepped out of her skirt and rolled down her stockings, she sits down on the side of the bed, and pats the duvet next to her. 'Take off your trousers, Billy, then come here, and lie down on your front.' Feeling slightly ridiculous in my vest, boxers and socks, I do, and what happens next is almost beyond the power of words to describe.

I'd always thought that touch was a means to an end, but Martha teaches me that it can be an end in itself, as she strokes and caresses and kneads almost every inch of my body, accepting its ageing, dying, tumour-riddled imperfection in a way that only makes me love her all the more. She finds all the sore places and the tight places and the aching places and the places that haven't been touched by a woman in so long I'd just about forgotten they were even there, and as she patiently works out the knots and lumps, the loneliness and isolation that only cancer can bring melts away too. She's the first person to shower me with such tenderness and love since I was a very young shaver indeed, and after a bit I start to drift off into a warm golden haze of happiness. For the first time since I was diagnosed, I don't feel so alone, and as her hands move across my skin, it's as if all her fight and strength and determination and sheer bloody-mindedness sort of flows from her fingertips and goes right into the core of me. I know it sounds like a lot of new age nonsense, but that's how it feels: as if I've been plugged straight into the mains. I wouldn't be surprised if I was lit up like a Christmas tree, but I'm too tired, and too happy, to open my eyes and check.

When she's finished, she pulls the duvet up over us both and curls her body around mine, humming low and slow in her throat as she slides one arm around my middle, nestling her chin into the space between my neck and my shoulder. Her hand rests reassuringly just below the curve of my ribcage, and I join my fingers with hers, still unable to believe that she's here. 'What're you humming?' I ask sleepily, too tired to place the vaguely familiar tune, and I feel her smiling into my shoulder as she replies, '"_Who wants to live forever_", you know, by Queen.' I can't help it: I laugh until I cry, for only Martha would have the balls to crack jokes in the face of death, while she laughs too, holding onto me as tight as a tick on a dog's ear. As I fall asleep, the last thing I hear is her whispering, 'I love you too, Billy Lamb, and don't you bloody _dare_ go dying on me now.'

Well, and who am I to argue with the most formidable barrister in London?

_**A/N: Billy and Martha are referencing Robert Herrick's poem 'To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time.' Update as at 07/01/15 - there was going to be one more chapter for this fic, but I've since realised that it is in fact already complete.**_


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